The Next New Thing

There is probably everything that needs to be created is already created regarding social media services. But I was thinking about social media site/app for people that work in the restaurant industry. There servers, bartenders, cooks, chefs and etc can share they ideas, stories, recipes for foods and cocktails. It would great way to meet other people in the same industry. It should allow people check in at restaurants and bars they go.  It also should allow search of people that are hanging out at the bars around your area so you can meet up with them. I think this kind of social media app exclusively for restaurant people will be a good idea since work hours for these people, like myself, are different than of the most people. 

Our Class Wiki - So Far

I have not done any contributions to class Wiki yet. I want to use the research I have done for term paper. My research was about using New Media technology in Education, how and where it can help and where it should be controlled more strictly. I collected a lot of information from scholarly articles and research papers with actual experiments. 

P2P File Sharing

File sharing is practice of distrubuting electronic files (docs, music, videos and etc.) through Internet. It is used to share useful information for business or to share files for entertainment purposes. 

P2P file sharing is form of file sharing that involves users exchanging e-files directly through Web. P2P is a technique that enables many connected computers work as one sharing not only data but also hardware resources that can be accessed remotely.

Examples of this can be file sharing web site like RapidShare, Kazaa, The Pirate Bay, and software like BitTorrent. According to "The BitTorrent Effect" article from WIRED, BitTorrent allows sharing files that are stored on ones computer with everyone else, and what's special about this software is that by using P2P technique it allows to download files from different sources that are located in different place simultaneously increasing the speed of the download from hours to minutes. 

Privacy & Confidentiality

As Joe Nocera, in his article on New York Times ‘The Wild West of Privacy,’ points out care for personal privacy is pretty much out the window. Companies collect a lot of information and data about our lives and habits. They make millions of dollars selling that data to anyone who is wants to buy. Facebook is probably is experience on this. The app on our phones can track your locations and frequently visited geographic places, on top of tracking our browsing habits, to give us relative advertisement. It's amazing how these site magically advertise a restaurant or a retail store you passed by recently or a product that you searched using internet. I guess for the most part, they are just trying to make money without actually hurting us, but these kinds of activities will backfire one day that no one will see its coming.

Advice to Baruch College

I guess I would not be the first choice to hire as a new media promoter since I am not so involved in posting and tweeting and so on. However, if I would make suggestions to Baruch College in using new media, I would say school needs to be more active and responsive to the students on social media sites and through other tools of new media. I follow few Baruch pages on Facebook, and for the most part I see frequent posts and announcements. But, I feel like there should be more useful and relevant information. I think announcements like school closed days, class cancellations, holidays and schedule changes needs to be distributed through social media sites, emails and etc. Distributing useful information as above doesn't cost anything on the digital world. 

Creativity and New Media

My Second Life so to speak. This thing is weird. I don't really know what to feel about it. 

CREATIVITY

This is a funny topic to me, since I am not so creative. No matter what I can do, the new media that is available today for millions of people is most useful and efficient tool to brainstorm, come up with ideas, put them to a test and create all sorts of things. Creativity and imagination made the possibility of a technology without which we can't even spend a day. The technology in it's turn gave possibility to create even more ideas and new ways of doing things. Just like Tweeter and many other companies use their users and followers to come with new ideas and improvements, the new media allows to use collective minds of millions of people where one can't even comprehend. Anyone who has an idea or a question can put it out there ask people all around the world and get answers within minutes. Technology increases the creativity of a collected minds exceptionally. This allows us to come up with new ideas and improve the old ones faster then it was ever done before. The year or two year old technology is already too old. It was improved multiples times since it was first introduced. I think the world we live in now is on the verge of a huge leap into the future of our imagination. 

Modeling Reality With Virtual Worlds

Create a new post on your blog with the above title. In your post, answer the following questions.

What are different ways these virtual worlds can be used? What are the pros and cons? Be specific. How do virtual worlds foster creativity? What do you think the future of virtual worlds will look like?

Cite at least 2 of the assigned readings.

Honestly, I thought virtual reality (VR) is used only in gaming and entertainment. Therefore, I didn't see any situation where it can be helpful. Unless, it is like The Matrix movie type of VR, where people can learn new skills by just uploading it to their minds. After reading articles like "iReport: 'Naughty Auties' battle autism with virtual interaction" by Nicole Saidi and "Avatar II: The Hospital" By Stephanie Simon, clearly theirs a potential to this technology. It can be used to learn and practice skills that are essential to real life situations to which is hard to imitate in classrooms. Nurses and any other skilled professional can benefit from practicing in virtual world. It can help people with brain disorders like of in autism spectrum. It can create a world where people who have problems socializing to overcome that barrier. 

VR can be used to foster creativity, allowing people speak out their minds and bring up ideas without a fear of being judged or humiliated. However, at this stage of technology of VR  there not many implications of it. Eventually, It will be very useful tool with thing like vr through smartphones, Microsoft's HoloLens, but it's still in the future. In the mean time we can use them for entertainment or to waste time with virtual worlds like There.com, IMVU.com or Second Life.com. It's all described in the article "No Budget, No Boundaries: It’s the Real You" by Ruth La Ferla. Services that I find useless and wasteful, but they can be a stepping stone for something greater. 

Blog About Twitter

Discussions in Tweeter compared to in Blackboard, or to in-class is very different. While in-class usually, no one wants to say anything that will grab everyone's attention and be overwhelmed with so much pressure. Most of the time students will be thinking about getting out as fast as they can and do other "more important things." However, student that are interested in the subject will be actively participating and specially if professor encourages it.  On Blackboard discussion are very dead, much worse than in-class. The only reason student participate, well everyone knows why, is to earn the credits and nothing more. The problem of discussions on Blackboard is that, it feels like no one cares, no one is reading the posts, even if someone responses, it is because they have to. So, no one really likes to post anything knowing no one would read or care about it. Tweeter, on the other hand, has much more people that will read and notice your opinion, but at the same time does not have those eyes staring back at them. It combines the freedom of saying whatever you want knowing people will notice and the privacy that will protect from being humiliated or embarrassed. 

Social Networking Sites

Social Networking is everywhere, obviously it has good and bad sides. Websites like Facebook, Tweeter, vk.com or Linkedin has different uses but having the same basic concept bringing people together. 
      I personally use facebook more often then any other social media website. Every time I get a free minute I go to my phone and check facebook feed. It is kind of addicting and annoying at the same time. Sometimes I hate myself for being on it so often. But there are useful sides to it, I check news through posting of various news portal. Be up to date with lives of my friends. I get a lot of information from facebook, and maybe that's why I am always checking the news feed. 
      Tweeter is actually new to me, it never attracted me for some reason. I understand that there is a ton information floating around on tweeter, and some of it useful. I never had a necessity of using it. However, just like any other popular website it has great implications and uses. It can be a useful tool helping people to get quick answer by just asking everyone who is connected. 
      Russian facebook many people call it, vk.com is Russian social networking website that connects millions of Russian speaking people around the world. Same as facebook, people can upload videos, pictures and even music, and use it as a streaming service without any payments. I get a lot of news and information about what's going on in Russia and surrounding countries. It is useful and also a time wasting.
      Linkedin is a little different then the website above, It is a professional networking site. It is most uses is to people who wants to expand their professional network, learn about companies and potential employers, promote themselves, and/or find jobs. By following companies you are interested in you can learn about policy changes, new business trend and etc. Linkedin has more serious tone, since it is used to connect with current and potential employers. You will not see anyone post about how drunk and crazy they were last weekend.
No matter how different these websites are, they all have the same idea behind it, to let people connect to each other, promote themselves and expand their network be it a professional or personal. 

Impacts of New Media on Education

With development and advancement of New Media technologies, our everyday life has changed as we know it. I want to research and discuss the impacts of New Media on Education and Learning. Traditional ways of education has changed with huge amount of online resources. Everyone who has an access to internet can learn and benefit from many information sources like blogs, social media, video blogs, ebooks and etc. While these resources are very useful it can have few negative effects as well. Because information is so readily available for students, they loose necessity to learn and retain information and knowledge. We became multitaskers that try to learn new things and do homework for a given subject and check out phones, social media website and etc. getting detracted and harming out learning process. I will analyze and research about this topic since it had a great impact on my learning skill, good and bad. My personal project will have my personal observation and experiences, as well as overall trend in this matter. 

Who I am.

My name is Vepa Seyidov. I am a student at Baruch College. I am majoring in Accounting and planning to graduate next year. I also bartend full time at a Spanish tapas restaurant.
This is my first blog ever created in the mainstream blogging website. Excited to see where this is going to take me.